Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021:260:51-78.
doi: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2020.10.001. Epub 2021 Feb 4.

Subjective hearing ability, physical and mental comorbidities in individuals with bothersome tinnitus in a Swedish population sample

Laura Basso  1 , Benjamin Boecking  1 , Petra Brueggemann  1 , Nancy L Pedersen  2 , Barbara Canlon  3 , Christopher R Cederroth  4 , Birgit Mazurek  5
Affiliations

Subjective hearing ability, physical and mental comorbidities in individuals with bothersome tinnitus in a Swedish population sample

Laura Basso et al. Prog Brain Res. 2021.

Abstract

Objective: This study investigates associations of subjective hearing ability, physical comorbidities, and mental comorbidities with bothersome (vs. non-bothersome) tinnitus and mediating effects between these influences.

Methods: The Swedish LifeGene cohort was used to sample cross-sectional survey data (collected 2009-2016) of 7615 participants with tinnitus, 697 (9.2%) of whom rated their tinnitus as bothersome. Associations between bothersome tinnitus and subjective hearing ability, physical and mental comorbidities were investigated by separate age- and gender-adjusted multiple logistic regression models. Interrelationships between these associations were investigated by logistic mediation models.

Results: Compared to non-bothersome tinnitus, bothersome tinnitus was associated with higher age, reduced subjective hearing ability, hearing-related difficulties in social situations, cardiovascular disease, chronic shoulder pain, thyroid disease, Ménière's disease, depression, anxiety syndrome, and social anxiety. Subjective hearing impairment or hearing-related difficulties mediated 13-36% of the effects of mental comorbidities on bothersome tinnitus. Depression or anxiety syndrome mediated 5-8% of most relationships between physical comorbidities and bothersome tinnitus. Depression, anxiety syndrome, or social anxiety mediated 2-4% of the effects of subjective hearing impairment or hearing-related difficulties on bothersome tinnitus.

Conclusion: Psychological factors, subjective hearing impairment, and hearing-related difficulties in social situations play key roles in predicting bothersome (vs. non-bothersome) tinnitus in a large population sample. Psychological factors contribute to explaining the impact of physical comorbidities and hearing-related effects on bothersome tinnitus. This highlights their transdiagnostic importance for aggravating varied physical symptom clusters. Interventions to improve or prevent high tinnitus burden should be interdisciplinary/multimodal and target auditory, physical, and psychological factors.

Keywords: Bothersome tinnitus; Hearing ability; Mediation analysis; Mental comorbidity; Physical comorbidity.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest CC is supported by the UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre but the views expressed herein are his own and do not represent those of NIHR nor the UK Department of Health and Social Care. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources